


No Forgiveness Under Heaven

by ElwritesFanworks



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Clothed Masturbation, Corpse Desecration, Corpses, Crying, Death, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hamlet's feelings for Horatio remain unknown, I'm Going to Hell, Kissing a corpse, M/M, Masturbation, Necrophilia, Non-Consensual Kissing, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Why Did I Write This?, consent impossible because death, vague aesthetic descriptions of dead bodies?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 06:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11030331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElwritesFanworks/pseuds/ElwritesFanworks
Summary: Horatio grieves in his own way, and, in doing so, damns himself.





	No Forgiveness Under Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Short, un-beta'd and almost surely trash. I simply couldn't shake this scene, and had to write it down.
> 
> Heed the warnings.

* * *

It is naught but wickedness to look upon that immaculate display of flowers and rich brocade, fur, velvet, embroidery, silver thread on black, with pearls and ivory lace, and to feel anything but grief. Grief he feels, of course, a deep, gnawing pain, as if wolves are upon him, macerating his ankles.

It is nothing short of sinful to want to kiss the lily-white brow, once creased with worry and pain, now smooth and cold; to see the elegant fingers of those folded hands and ache to hold them; to stroke the silken strands of glossy hair that lie in perfumed ringlets ‘round the head of the deceased. His face should not be handsome, soft in death, expressionless and still. His mouth, which smiled rarely these last days, but which, in grinning, could turn even the darkest winter into springtime, should be unkissed, and what virtue the poor soul had retained should be protected.

Horatio knows all of this, but still he aches, all in his tripe and inner workings. He had thought himself spared the worst of this accursed place, yet how wrong he had been, for now he looks upon a dead man – not merely that – his prince, his _Hamlet,_ and feels that wickedness coiling like a snake in his belly.

He has come to pray. He has come to lay a flower on the young man’s breast, and to weep over him, yet this private visitation in this cold and frightful crypt has taken on a new and dizzying meaning. He cannot stop his shaking hands from settling on the royal corpse’s cheeks.

Cold. Colder than the heart of winter. Why, then, is it not cold enough to freeze his blood? The ache remains, hot and hungering.

One kiss. One brief press of scalding lips to frozen ones. One ill-devised motion, one sweeping gesture with that troublesome muscle, and Horatio’s tongue squirms over the clammy, bloated thing in Hamlet’s mouth.

There are dark spirits, here. Ghosts and sinister happenings. Suppose the prince’s father should return, or any of the dead, or – God forbid – the prince himself – and witness such an indignity as this - what then? Horatio is mute with shame even as his hand seeks out his need and presses over it so that he stutters a groan against the dead man’s lips.

It takes no time at all, his hand between his legs, his forehead resting against that noble brow. He breathes wet clouds, white in the chilled air of the crypt, against unyielding, spit-slicked lips, and whimpers as he spends.

There is no forgiveness under Heaven that will spare him judgement for what he has just done. Even so, he kneels and prays, and prays and rocks, and rocks and weeps, until he has no strength left. Piety does not spare him torment, now, for he is fallen – doomed like the rest of the miserable occupants of these notorious halls. Peace does not find him, and the gloom remains, a funeral shroud, a weight upon his heart.


End file.
